Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Beauty and God

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Drawing by  Lesley Fellows
Me, original design














My opinionated daughters engaged me in a heated theological debate on beauty this week.
Irene saunters into my bedroom. Her beloved black and gold Tinker Bell pyjama top has a tear down the seam.
“Irene, throw it away,” I say.
She scrunches up her face, “NO,” she says appalled.
I hand her a needle and thread.
“Then, mend it,” I say.
“No,” she says. “It’s a pyjama top.”
I, “You are a daughter of a King. There is no need for you to wear torn clothes.”
She, appalled again, “He couldn’t care what I look like. He didn’t care what he looked like.”
Me, a bit uncertain, “You don’t think God cares what you look like?”
She, “No! He’d just look at my face.”
Me, “Oh”
* * *
Zoe, 16, agrees with her sister. She wore contact lenses for 2 days, then declared that they were too much hassle. “But, but, but…” I stammer.
My very appearance-conscious father used to joke, “Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses” and got both his daughters contacts in our teens, my sister’s when she was ten!!
I can hardly say that to Zoe. I am, roughly speaking, a feminist, and have tried to raise them to be independent and self-confident.
Zoe, seeing me falter, adds, for good measure. “And I have decided not to ever use make up either.” I gave her a lovely triple layer make-up kit for her 16th birthday, full of the most gorgeous gold, and bronze and silver and purples, which I would have had fun using as a teenager. “What?” I say. “Make up is fun; it’s like art; it’s like painting.” The fact that I rarely remember to use it probably undermines my words.
* * *
I thought of an argument I had with a close American friend of ours, who was a mentor to us when we lived in America around the time Irene was born. I had gained a lot of weight during that pregnancy and he—we had regular bi-weekly spiritual direction sessions over a period of 5 years– was urging me to diet and exercise.
Me, “I don’t think God cares what I look like.”
He, “Anita, when you write how you put it is as important as what you say. Your appearance is part of who you are.”
I somewhat bought his argument—though I have gained another 18 pounds since Irene was born in May 1999. Sigh!
Yes, God loves beauty, and so perhaps we should try to look as attractive as we can, given our starting point?
                                                       * * *
So how should a daughter of the King look? A story I heard the father of the friend I’ve just mentioned tell has influenced my thinking on the subject.
Jack Miller and his wife Rosemary who had founded World Harvest Mission were visiting Uganda. They come late to a meeting, and every seat was taken except the ones right in front, next to the President, Idi Amin. Rosemary nervously tells Jack, “I’ll sit on the grass.” “Jack says, “Rosemary, no! You are wearing a lovely dress. You are a daughter of the King. Be brave. We will sit in front.” And they go and sit next to Idi Amin, who is gracious to them.
This is a useful principle for me when I declutter. If something is too old, faded, stained, worn—whether an item of clothing, or furniture or household item, carpets, towels etc.—to be in the house of a daughter of the King, out it goes.
                                                            * * * 
I don’t agree with Irene. I think God cares for his “original design” in us and wants us to fit and strong, and attractive in accordance with his original design for us. As is fitting for daughters of the King.
* * *
I noticed over the 17 years I lived in America that every female Christian leader and teacher was also slim and gorgeous. She would not have had much appeal to other Christian women if she had not been so. And so would not have been able to exercise her ministry as effectively
*  * *
I have have theoretically acquiesced that my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and it is important to keep it fit. However, my resolutions falter on a weekly basis faced with chocolate, let’s say, or how much more magnetic my laptop is than weight-lifting. I guess the girls have picked up what I do rather than what I say.
* * *
I have two friends with the degenerative neurological disease, MND or Lou Gehrigh’s disease. They have speech and physical therapy. Their body will degenerate anyway—but fighting against it will so something to ameliorate the degeneration.
And so, if, despite trying, in fits and starts, to exercise and eat more healthily, I still gain a few pounds over a course of the year, I am trying not to be discouraged, but remember that if I did not, I could easily gain a few pounds in the course of a month—or week.
                                                               * * *
So what do you think? Does God care about what we look like? Would he like us to continue trying to look reasonably attractive—or is he mainly concerned with the beauty of our spirits?

Jesus of Montreal–Age Cannot Wither Him, nor Custom Stale his Infinite Variety

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More modern and edgy than the sheerly beautiful and sublime Of Gods and Men, this French language film had me gripped and intrigued.
Daniel Coulombe, an out of work actor is hired to modernize Montreal Cathedral’s dated and floundering passion play. 
A dedicated method actor, he immerses himself in the Gospels, and in all the historical and archeological information he can find on the life and times of Jesus.
The movie bears unobtrusive parallels to the Gospels. Daniel chooses a cast of unlikely actors–nude models, porn stars, unwed mothers–people who have known what it is to be humiliated, to fail, to be outsiders, on the edges, derided.
For such the Gospel has extraordinary relevance. The idea that each of them is special to God. That His acceptance is infinite. That for sinners, such as them, Christ came. And so they give emotionally charged, luminous, heart-speaking-to-heart performances in the Passion Play.
Daniel immerses himself in the words of Christ, producing haunting theatrical performances of Jesus mingling with the crowd with his powerful message of God’s love and acceptance, with his encouragment not to worry but to trust, and to feed on his words and message. He makes the words of Jesus contemporary and relevant, as, in fact, they are–though they often cry out for “Fresh Expressions.”
Since, the company uses method acting (immersing yourself in your character), Daniel, in particular, begins to see the world as Jesus would have. When his friend is commanded to strip in a modelling audition, he overturns and destroys the expensive cameras, computers and equipment.
And he berates pompous religious hypocrites in words of Christ from the Gospels–which are a presciently accurate portrayal of religious leaders when power, money, prestige muddy the pristine waters of simple devotion. 
His words come too close to the bone. The play is closed down. They perform it one last time in defiance. Security is summoned. In the melee, the cross with Daniel on topples, crushing him.
He is taken to the Jewish General Hospital where a shifty doctor, having established that he has no relatives, declares him brain dead, and takes his heart, eyes, liver, kidney,s etc from his still living body to give new life to those on the waiting list.

And so Daniel Coulombe (dove in French) has a resurrection!!

                                                                            
                               * * *  
What most fascinated me was the extraordinary power and relevance of Jesus’ words to transform mind, heart and character of anyone who meditated on them long enough.
Daniel Coulombe’s performance reminded me of a splendid portrayal of Jesus in the Holy Land Experience in Orlando,  Florida. Jesus strolled through the amusement park crowds, just chatting. He crouched down in front of my daughter, Irene, showed her a flower, and told her not to worry, since God would give her beauty as he made the lilies shine.
He scooped up Zoe in his arms, and delivered the Sermon on the Mount, holding her, telling the crowd that they should become like little children.
Zoe was captured on dozens of video cameras, and people recognized her all week as we did the tourist circuit in Orlando–Disneyworld, Epcot Centre and MGM Studios. She was young enough to believe that Jesus carried her, which is what she told all her friends!

“Of Gods and Men” A Sublime and Beautiful Film

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I watched this film by Xavier Beauvois last night. It is one of the most beautiful, even sublime, films I’ve seen in a long time.

It’s the true story of 9 Trappist monks in the Tibhirine Monastery in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria. They live a beautiful life of prayer, Gregorian chant, and work: medical work among the poor for Brother Luc; study of the Koran for the scholarly abbot Christian; and making honey, growing vegetables, and tending sheep for the others. They are self-sufficient, and advise, succour and provide free medical care for the local villagers, who love them.

Algeria was torn by a civil war between a corrupt government and the mujahadeen. The latter are barbarous–they murder girls without the hijab; teachers who speak of “love marriages;” harmless Croatian highway workers.

They pay the monks an armed visit. Both army and police warn the monks that it is a just a matter of time before they too are murdered. And offer armed protection.

The Abbot, Christian de Cherge refuses. He cannot have the soldiers of a corrupt government in the monastery.
                                                   * * * 

post01-christianmuslimlove
Of Gods and Men. The Monks Vote to Stay

                                                       
The crux of the drama is the decision: Should they stay, or return to France?

The mujahadeen are illiterate and murderous. Sooner or later, they will be murdered, they all realize.

The villagers plead with them to stay. They feel safe as long as the monks stay.

And they do, madly sacrificing their one and precious life (in a decision, I feel was a mistake).

Why? Because they believed they had already died when they decided to follow Christ as a monk. That being a martyr was no less foolish than being a monk. That they had chosen to incarnate with the villagers, in their poverty and powerlessness, and to flee would not be right. That the Good Shepherd would not do that. That they should stay in the place they had committed to stay (and trust the results of that choice to God).

It is perhaps relevant that Trappists take the fourth vow of stability. They promise to stay rooted in the monastery they enter. And so these monks do.

They are taken hostage. Murdered.  As they more or less foreknew.

                                                  * * *

Mad men, or saints?

Sometimes, the prudent choice would be such a denial of everything you lived for to date. Of everything you value. Of everything you hope to live for.

To betray your ideals and everything you have lived for to save your own life is just another form of death.

So fleeing would negate their commitment to love, powerlessness, trust, incarnation, service, the village of Tibhirine, Algeria, and their fourth monastic vow of stability, commitment to a place.

What then would they live for in the future if they had allowed fear to negate everything they had lived for so far–and hoped to live for?

This is the reasoning which leads men and women to die rather than deny Christ.
                                                 * * *

 The Abbot Christian de Cherge belonged to a distinguished French military family and fought in the French army during the brutal Algerian war of independence. A Muslim friend, Mohammed, faced down local rebels who wanted to shoot Christian when they were taking their customary walk, and discussing their faith. The next day, the rebels shot Mohammed.

The real life Christian left a beautiful testament, in which he addresses his “friend of the last minute, who will not have known what you are doing. May we meet again, as happy thieves in Paradise.”
                                                  * * *

In the contemporary classic, Desiring God, John Piper ridicules the idea that there is an inherent beauty in the monastic life of prayer, quietness and worship.

This film shows the beauty of that life. You can almost taste the silence. The peace. The grace. The balm of the Psalms. Oh to be a contemplative! A contemplative in the world, since my life choices have closed the other path to me.

                                                 * * *


 And here is the Testament left by the real-life the abbot, Dom Christian de Chergé

Facing a GOODBYE …

If it should happen one day — and it could be today — that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to engulf all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church and my family to remember that my life was GIVEN to God and to this country.

I ask them to accept the fact that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure.

I ask them to associate this death with so many other equally violent ones which are forgotten through indifference or anonymity.

My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood.

I have lived long enough to know that I am an accomplice in the evil which seems to prevail so terribly in the world, even in the evil which might blindly strike me down.

I should like, when the time comes, to have a moment of spiritual clarity which would allow me to beg forgiveness of God and of my fellow human beings, and at the same time forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down.

I could not desire such a death. It seems to me important to state this.

I do not see, in fact, how I could rejoice if the people I love were indiscriminately accused of my murder.

It would be too high a price to pay for what will perhaps be called, the “grace of martyrdom” to owe it to an Algerian, whoever he might be, especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam.

I am aware of the scorn which can be heaped on the Algerians indiscriminately.

I am also aware of the caricatures of Islam which a certain Islamism fosters.

It is too easy to soothe one’s conscience by identifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideology of its extremists.

For me, Algeria and Islam are something different: it is a body and a soul.

I have proclaimed this often enough, I think, in the light of what I have received from it.

I so often find there that true strand of the Gospel which I learned at my mother’s knee, my very first Church, precisely in Algeria, and already inspired with respect for Muslim believers.

Obviously, my death will appear to confirm those who hastily judged me naive or idealistic:
“Let him tell us now what he thinks of his ideals!”

But these persons should know that finally my most avid curiosity will be set free.

This is what I shall be able to do, God willing: immerse my gaze in that of the Father to contemplate with him His children of Islam just as He sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, the fruit of His Passion, filled with the Gift of the Spirit whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and restore the likeness, playing with the differences.

For this life lost, totally mine and totally theirs, I thank God, who seems to have willed it entirely for the sake of that JOY in everything and in spite of everything.

In this THANK YOU, which is said for everything in my life from now on, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you, my friends of this place, along with my mother and father, my sisters and brothers and their families — you are the hundredfold granted as was promised!

And also you, my last-minute friend, who will not have known what you were doing:

Yes, I want this THANK YOU and this GOODBYE to be a “GOD BLESS” for you, too, because in God’s face I see yours.

May we meet again as happy thieves in Paradise, if it please God, the Father of us both.

AMEN! INCHALLAH! 

The Parable of the Talents: A Parable for Business and Life

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The Parable of the Talents

This parable is probably the one which has intrigued me more than any other.


Those given the talent of ability to begin with are entrusted with more.
No directions are given. The wealth (in this parable) is given to them in trust.
And they are now to get on with their lives.
It is a test.

Those who have made the most of what they have been given are given increased responsibility–and happiness.
Those who have not lose what they have been given–and it is given to those who already have a lot.
This parable, among all Jesus’s parables is the most true to life as I have observed and experienced it.
One starting point is random: different people are given different “talents”–intelligence, wealth, beauty, family connections, health….

To those who are diligent about using what they have is more given. And even more.

Those who are not diligent lose the little they have.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

At a certain period in my life, I was the wicked and lazy servant–not making use of my education and writing gifts, not making the most of my financial resources. I experienced a bit of what Jesus talks about, seeing people who perhaps had less writing ability and training do far better than I because of diligence. And financially, I found myself with less disposable income than people who are more careful with their money.

And seeing that, this parable became tatooed on my mind and skin. I now am really nervous about not making the most of what I have been given–both material resources, and talents and abilities.
ATTITUDE
The former two servants go the extra mile. Is it fondness for their employer, or is it a finely developed sense of responsibility?

They prove worthy of the trust, they turn over all their proceeds to their employer. They are rewarded with increased responsibility–and happiness.

The third servant has a stingy attitude–he does not want the master to harvest where he has not sown.
He does not want to do anything more than the minimum, and has no interest in being a blessing to his master. No interest in the extra mile.

Because of his stinginess, he loses what he has, whereas the generous, helpful servant is rewarded.
That too is true: that a generous, helpful attitude, being willing to go the extra mile is richly rewarded in business, in life–whereas–for reasons that are not entirely obvious–never being willing to do more than the minimum, leads to failure and a general crimping of life. 
FAITHFULNESS

Being faithful in small things is a sure way to expanded responsibility and recognition.

What has God entrusted you with today? Being faithful with it will lead to you having an enlarged territory, as Jabez expresses in his prayer.
A personal commission 
Do the best you can with what God has given you. However, God does not judge people comparatively, but in accordance with the gifts he has given them to begin with.

How we handle spiritual truth

The parable, as Jesus says elsewhere, is to do with what one does with the  spiritual truth one hears and understands.
Those who are faithful with obeying it, and living it out will be given even more spiritual insight and wisdom.
On the other hand, those who hear with no interest in obeying, and living out their spiritual insights will find themselves forgetting them, or retaining their once glowing spiritual insights as dull, tarnished, unappealing things. 

Jesus concludes this parable in other synoptics by saying, “Let him who has ears to hear, hear.”

Personal Business Application
What is a good rate of return on an investment of money or effort?

The parable suggests 100% at least. Invest a £100, make £200, let’s say.

Is this possible? Yes. Not always at first, for business, like most things is an art which has to be learned.

The thing to focus on is leveraging one’s time, energy, talents, investments, raw materials, so as to obtain at least double of what you invested. I learned a lot about this principle of leveraging from a book I picked up second-hand, “The Lazy Man’s Guide to Riches.”

Here is Steve Pavlina’s take on the application of the parable of talents to business.  

Excerpts:

 


What’s the ultimate reward for the faithful servants?  Although Jesus doesn’t explicitly say it, it seems obvious they don’t get to keep the money.  The two successful servants aren’t even working for their own increase.  It’s not their money.  They’re working for the increase of their master, and they share in the increase to his estate.  Their true reward is to share in their master’s happiness.  So happiness is the reward, and happiness comes from serving others.

I know from experience that if I undertake some action to create increase only for myself, there’s very little energy to it, and it doesn’t usually increase my happiness.  But if I focus on creating increase for others (such as by helping people grow), then I feel great joy in doing that, and it ultimately creates increase for me too.

 As Jesus implies in The Parable of the Talents, creating abundance requires you to move beyond fear.  If you’re too fearful or suspicious or distrustful, you’re going to bury your talents.  And this leads to “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” i.e. sorrow and depression.

You might think that fear and suspicion will keep you out of trouble, but really they’ll just cause you suffering and pain.  You don’t need fear to avoid being a gullible idiot; for that you just need common sense.  To live a life of abundance, you must ultimately move beyond fear and work to create abundance for others.  Otherwise you’ll ultimately be cast out as worthless.  Jesus doesn’t pull any punches here, youse bums.

Serve to create increase for others, and happiness is your reward.  Bury your talents, and you get “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  The choice is yours.


Readiness: Wise and Foolish Virgins, Blog Through the Bible Project

Wilhelm Von Schadow, Wise and Foolish Virgins.
 The Parable of the Ten Virgins

 1 “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish and five were wise. 3 The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. 4 The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. 5 The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
    6 “At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’

   7 “Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. 8 The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’

   9 “‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’

   10 “But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.

   11 “Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’

   12 “But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’

   13 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.

Just one life. Just one. And at the end, we will meet Christ, the bridegroom. 


Are we living in readiness for him? Or are we totally unprepared? 

Christ says, “Be ready, because you don’t know the day or the hour. And when he returns, no one can help us out. We have to take personal responsibility for our readiness.

What it means to keep one’s lamp filled with oil varies according to our calling. For me, it would mean learning to keep my eyes on Jesus through the day. Being faithful to my calling as a writer, be it “less or more, or soon or slow, mean or high” as Milton writes about his calling in Sonnet 23.


It means being kind to my husband. Investing in my kids.

This is a quiet patch in my life; I am not as involved in church stuff as I normally have been, which means a kind of simplifying when it comes to the question of what God’s will for me is, what keeping my lamp full of oil means.

To keep my eyes on Jesus. To write. To love my husband. To try to mother my kids well.

 




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Heresy, History and Politics in Ravenna’s mosaiced churches

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The Arian Baptistery

Arian Baptistry from the outside

The Arian heresy, quite intuitively and reasonably I think, saw the Son as just that, a son, subordinate to the Father, in submission to him, not quite as omnipotent or omniscient as him.


Theodoric, an early ruler of Ravenna, and the Germans and Goths were Arians. The native Italians, and the Emperor in Constantiople adhered more or less to present day Christian orthodoxy.


The political power struggle between the two culminated in the Council of Chalcedon. The Arians lost and were persecuted.


Were the Goths, Ostrogoths and Germans stronger, Christian theology today might have looked different.


I took a two term course in the History of Christianity at Oxford University last year. Theology and dogma, I learnt was always formulated in the interplay of power politics, national politics, money, influence, and who detested, or was envious of whom.


No theological system, it’s likely, is right on every point–even, perhaps, whichever one we ourselves adhere to!! 

Saint Apollinaire Nuovo  on a sunny spring day.


Charming magi in the church

Female Martyrs in the Church

Neonian Baptistry, Ravenna, an orthodox baptistry
10 sided Mausoleum of Theodoric, Ravenna



Ravenna Mosaics, Apollinaire at Classe

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Sant Apollinare in Classe, outskirts of Ravenna.
6th-7th century AD.
Very peaceful. Like stepping into another world.


The mosaic in the apse, shown before is an allegorical representation of the Transfiguration. It is hypnotic.


Right in the centre of the cross is an image of Christ, see detail above.


Funny, how the Christian imagination has almost always represented Christ in the same way–long, lean bearded face, piercing eyes.

Robert Powell in Franco Zefferelli’s Jesus of  Nazareth


 See also Byzantine Mosaics the Mausoleum of Galla Placida
http://dreamingbeneaththespires.blogspot.com/2011/04/byzantine-art-of-mosaics-and-mausoleum.html

Paul on homosexuality. Romans 1. Blog Through the Bible Project

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God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights

Romans 1: 21-27
 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Okay, let’s read through this. Because men neither glorified God, nor thanked him, their thinking tended to futility (uselessness), their hearts were darkened, and they became fools.

Their trajectory is set away from God–and so God allows them to continue on the trajectory they have chosen.

He surrenders them to their own lust. And to be surrendered to one’s own lust, without restraint or governance from God, is a very scary thing indeed.

And some men and women experienced lust for one another. “And received in themselves the penalty for their error.” What is this referring to? A prophetic reference to AIDS–a common interpretation? Or to the health risks of gay sex?

Evangelical and Liberal Christians do not agree on their intepretation of homosexuality–is it, or is not, sinful?–and since it is not a sin, or otherwise, which I am/have been particularly tempted by–and I have plenty of my own temptations–I am not going to blog further about it.

Of course this is Paul’s letter to the Romans, not mine. He is a first century Jew; he may or may not be homophobic; and the words he uses to describe homosexuality, not surprisingly for his era are “unnatural,” and verse 27, “shameful,” which is either a reference to homosexuality, or to particular homosexual practices. 

What do you think? How do you read this passage?

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God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts

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Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights







Romans 1: 21-27
 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.


 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Okay, let’s read through this. Because men neither glorified God, nor thanked him, their thinking tended to futility (uselessness), their hearts were darkened, and they became fools.

Their trajectory is set away from God–and so God allows them to continue on the trajectory they have chosen.

He surrenders them to their own lust. And to be surrendered to one’s own lust, without restraint or governance from God, is a very scary thing indeed.

And some men and women experienced lust for one another. “And received in themselves the penalty for their error.” What is this referring to? A prophetic reference to AIDS–a common interpretation? Or to the health risks of gay sex?

Homosexuality is a controversial topic in liberal Christian circles–is it, or is not, sinful– and since it is not a sin, or otherwise, which I am/have been particularly tempted by–and I have plenty of my own temptations–I am not going to blog further about it.

Of course this is Paul’s letter to the Romans, not mine. He is a first century Jew; he may or may not be homophobic; and the words he uses to describe homosexuality, not surprisingly for his era are “unnatural,” and verse 27, “shameful,” which is either a reference to homosexuality, or to particular homosexual practices. 

What do you think? How do you read this passage?