It’s not a potion to cure colds. It’s a choice of the way to catch flies. According to the old saying, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

I’ve encountered a church here in my hometown that studied last summer the question of homosexuality, a topic I only touched on lightly in a recent blog post. Since I was off work all day yesterday with a migraine that wouldn’t let me think, work, or focus my eyes easily, I listened to the entire series of messages.

After my vision improved, I posted the links to them last night on Brandon Scott Thomas‘s blog, where a discussion with several folks – including a couple of gay Christians – took place in the Comments recently.

How can I say “gay Christians”? The same way I can say “divorced Christians” or “stumbling Christians” or “greedy Christians” or “exclusionary Christians.” I don’t mean it as a label, just a descriptor. We have in common a belief in Christ. We have different temptations.

The series followed by Little Rock Church – which has a “Church of Christ” heritage – was called “Full of Grace and Truth: A Christ-Like Response to Homosexuality.” Most are MP3s you can listen to; the last one is a page listing/linked to resources:

• Part 1: Attitude Adjustment
• Interlude: Parable of the Good Samaritan Revisited
• Part 2: What the Bible Says and Doesn’t Say About Homosexuality
• Part 3: Building Bridges to Homosexual Friends and Relatives
• Interlude: Story Changing Grace
• Part 4: A Christ-Like Response (Panel Discussion)
• List of Resources

I’d encourage you to listen to the messages in the order presented, and be blessed. I really appreciate the candor and spirit with which this church looked into the matter, with plenty of grace but without playing fast and loose with the truth.

They’ve chosen honey, because they want to catch more (souls, not flies). But the whole of the message is not sweet. As the saying implies, there are some that can be caught with vinegar. So there is a taste of it in these messages, because homosexuality is sin.

Just a taste for a person crucified by the perpendicular beams of his/her passion for Christ and attraction to the same sex.

Just enough.

You get all kinds of comments on an open blog – and this one is. Today I received this comment to an archived post:

“I think you misunderstand the Scriptures, the Restoration Movement, and the Church of Christ.”

That was almost all it said.

Not specific, to be sure. But gentle, tempered by the words “I think” and “misunderstand.” Just the kind of rebuke I would want to receive, and rebuke is a scriptural concept too frequently abused and infrequently done well.

I would have to agree that I often do not understand the Scriptures, the Restoration Movement, or the Church of Christ.

I don’t claim to have answers – possible answers, maybe – but I have a lot of questions.

I respect mystery as a key aspect of God’s nature, and therefore His Word.

I think everyone should study and come up with his/her own answers and possible answers, because the struggle with some issues is sometimes more important than the answers we perceive.

My initial reaction has been tempered by a recent post by fellow blogger David U. Though I share the skepticism of another fellow blogger, Fred Peatross, that “that blogs will ever become a link/connection to those Jesus misses most”, my commenter is making an honest effort at it.

I know, because the rest of the comment I received from him yesterday was a name, and a URL to a blog. In fairness to the points of view expressed there – whether I agree with all of them as crucial items in a relationship with God through Christ is immaterial – I’d like to post a link to it:

http://clearcutbiblestudies.blogspot.com/

It may help someone passing through this blog to come up with answers that draw him or her to Christ – or closer to Him – and I am all for that!

The last one, I promise. If you missed the first and second ones, no big deal.

This one comes from movie # VI: The Undiscovered Country. The fans are ahead of me, already anticipating that the moment takes place in Cap’n Spock’s quarters as he and fellow (mostly) Vulcan Lt. Valeris discuss the very impressionistic-looking painting hanging there: The Expulsion from Eden. It’s Spock’s reminder to himself that “All things end.” (Which is sort of appropriate, since this is the last film to feature the original cast.)

But the moment comes a few lines later:

Spock: “History is replete with turning points, Lieutenant. We must have faith.”

Valeris: “Faith?” (Well, this would be an unusual concept to the all-logical Vulcan mind.)

Spock (apparently paraphrasing Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata): “That the universe will unfold as it should.”

Valeris: “But is that logical? Surely we must ….?”

Spock (apparently quoting his human mother, who once expressed being “sick to death” of logic): “Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris – not the end.”

Okay, that’s pretty close to Proverbs 1:7. Sort of. The fear of the Lord is logical. Right?

But my real question is whether we can, in a faith as profound as Ehrmann’s (or the legendary Spock’s), believe that the universe will unfold as it should.

I believe in prophecy. I believe that Old Testament prophecy proved true in the New Testament. I believe that New Testament prophecy proves to be true as well. I believe that it says, in very few words of summary, that the universe unfolds as it should.

God wins. Satan loses.

Our faith in that truth – though tested by accident, natural disaster, crime, war, evil, even political assassination of presidents or prime ministers – will not be in vain.

That’s logical too. Isn’t it?

Visit Val’s blog today, read When The Music Fades and be blessed.

Just the insight of “the first ten kisses” would have been enough to enrich your whole day.

There’s enough there, in the fading moments of his sister’s life, to bless all of yours.

A couple of nights ago while not sleeping late into the night, I had this odd idea to start a New Wineskins BLOG here on Blogger.com/Blogspot.com and turn it over to Greg Taylor, the online magazine’s managing editor. Little did I know that he’d been wanting to do one for a long time.

After a good night’s sleep (so I could handle HTML coding again), I put one together, and Greg seems really excited about it. He wants to use it to post some free-access articles so that non-subscribers will be able to get a taste for the good stuff behind the firewall.

There is some really good stuff there.

And it will be a place where folks can comment on articles they’ve read in both areas, hopefully.

I think he’ll be inviting the other NW editors, publisher, and several other writers to be authors on the site and I’ll stick around as a co-administrator to help tweak that Blogspot template as needed.

I pray that the good Lord will bless it, and bless many through it.

“We do not ask that they give up their opinions, for they can hold their opinions as private property; we only ask that they not impose their opinions upon others as tests of fellowship.” – Alexander Campbell, from his article in the Millennial Harbinger, 1830, p. 145.