09 September 2009

By the light of the lake moon



It's always interesting what comes up in conversation around the campfire. Must be why we don't have campfires too often lately!

We didn't have many people at the campfire over the weekend, just my PIL and SIL. Somehow the conversation drifted to the ELCA and their recent vote on homosexual clergy. Actually, my husband asked my PIL and SIL what they thought of it since his family are all members of the ELCA. I grimaced when he asked the question. I dislike these types of conversations since we are always at odds with my in-laws on nearly everything. Especially these topics.

My SIL, who is surprisingly very active in her parish, went on at length (without really saying much) about how she disagreed with changing the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples. Why? Because "the bible defines marriage as between a man and a woman." Calling it a civil union is fine, just don't call it marriage.

Huh?

It took me a few minutes to get past the obvious and return to the conversation. If you're going to quote the bible and use it as your authority on things, take what it says as "gospel," then how can you so quickly discard it, still within the same breath, arguably within the same thought? If the bible says marriage is between a man and a woman and you hold firm on that, but then moving beyond what the bible says on marriage to what the bible says on homosexuality, you now contradict or conflict with your source, don't you have a problem?

More absurd was my MIL's respose to my SIL (her daughter). My MIL said, "I don't care (what they want to call civil unions)." I don't know if she's apathetic or is merely blinded by the empiricism or relativism of today's culture.

It was interesting to see how my MIL and SIL, both members of the same parish, disagreed with each other and neither could definitively say whether the other was right or wrong.

And to think we could've been sitting there blissfully eating smores.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

How people use Scripture will never cease to amaze me. It just strikes me as a bit...well arrogant.
And then it so often makes NO sense whatsoever. I wonder if it is apathy or is it fear? If they really started looking at what the truth it, I wonder what would happen.
As it happens I was thinking today about the new interpretation of the destruction of Sodom is based on refusing hospitality- and of course they did; but it was a symptom of the active anti-family annti-marriage pro-gay (for want of a better word right now) lifestyle. The contraceptive mentality also breaks down hospitality.
God bless

kam said...

Had the same crazy thing happen about a month ago after our Evening Prayer in the church, and this with someone within our Secular Franciscan group. She's an older women (70's), and a firm believer in Life in the Spirit prayer meetings and she sort of left me dumbfounded with some of her comments about the Mass and the catholic church in general. Something along the lines of "I don't really care what the priest says up there, as long as it makes everybody happy." And then somthing about too many rules in the church, etc, etc. I don't know, it left me with a bad feeling. Way too protestant, or something. At least your SIL and MIL are from a different church. I had this coming from a Secular Franciscan!

swissmiss said...

Hi Mum:
I do agree about the fear aspect of examining one's life or the reluctance to do so. I really believe this is as the bottom of my MIL's defensiveness and anger when the subject of religion comes up.

KAM:
My mother would be in her 70s and she went to college at (St. Catherine's). Many of the ladies still are in touch with one another and a good number of them are quite liberal. In fact, right now they are trying to oust their parish priest because he's too conservative and out of touch. Tragic and cruel.

Cathy_of_Alex said...

Whenever I see one of your campfire posts, Swissy, I think "oh no!". Gosh, don't you guys just drink beer and tell completely unbelievable fishing stories? Oh, wait, that's my family...

swissmiss said...

Can you adopt me? I'd love to sit around the campfire and talk about fishing. Nope, hubby's family has to talk about either religion or politics. That's all.