(This weblog creates, for us all, a chance to meet at the interaction of Life and the New Spirituality. It is written by the author of Conversations with God, the worldwide best-selling series of books. The “New Spirituality” is defined by the author as “a new way to experience and express our natural impulse toward the Divine without making others wrong for the way in which they are doing it.”)

HIGHLIGHTS OF TODAY’S BLOG…
* Should churches offer a funeral service for a man who was gay?
* God’s love dies at death, apparently
* Is religious discrimination against gays “what God wants”?
* What DOES God want, anyway, with regard to homosexuals?

You could not have missed it if you have any interest at all in God and the place where God and Life meet. I mean, the story made all the news services and was splashed all over the Internet.
It seems that a church with a huge congregation in Arlington, Texas canceled a memorial service for a Navy veteran scheduled for last Thursday, giving grieving relatives just 24 hours notice that the funeral was off — because church officials learned that the deceased man was gay.
That’s right. You heard me right. The pastor of the nondenominational High Point Church, which boasts 5,000 members, admitted to the media that he had done just that. In a copyrighted story the Associated Press reported that Rev. Gary Simons said: “We did decline to host the service — not based on hatred, not based on discrimination, but based on principle.”
The AP story also reported that Rev. Simons said, “It’s not that we didn’t love the family,” but he explained that…

…holding the memorial service for Cecil Howard Sinclair would have sent a message that the church condoned or endorsed the gay lifestyle, which would not be in accordance with the church’s belief that homosexuality is a sin.
While the sister of the deceased — who was not a member of the church — said that church officials knew when the funeral was scheduled that Mr. Sinclair was gay, the pastor said the church only found out a day before the memorial service was scheduled…and canceled the funeral immediately. My. Sinclair’s obituary was found to have listed his life partner as one of his survivors.
Mr. Sinclair, who was 46, died a week ago Monday from an infection after surgery to prepare him for a heart transplant. The AP story reported that he had served in the first Gulf War.
The service was moved at the last minute by the family to a funeral home, where the church reportedly provided food for more than 100 family members and friends.
All of this leads to some interesting questions. Is the action taken by the church a reflection of the highest spiritual principles? Is this the kind of attitude and action we wish to teach our children? Does God disapprove of gays and condemn them to everlasting damnation?
In the book What God Wants these kinds of questions are explored. The book first explains what many people think that God wants, then offers a new idea about that — an idea which, the book declares, will be prevalent after humanity adopts a New Spirituality. From the text:

Many humans have been told that What God Wants is for sex to be experienced between a male and a female only, and for same-gender sexual interaction to be considered an abomination.
One result of this teaching: Humans for whom same-gender sexual attraction feels most natural have been denounced, vilified, condemned, ostracized, isolated, assaulted, and killed by people who believe they are doing God’s will.
The sad account of the killing of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming offers us a now-famous case in point. Shepard, an openly gay freshman at the University of Wyoming, was dragged out of a bar in Laramie by two young men, driven to a deserted road outside of town, tied to a cow fence and beaten so severely that he lapsed into a coma and died five days later.
His youthful assailants were apprehended and sentenced to life in prison, but the Reverend Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas was not inclined to let the matter rest there. Every year for the five years following Matthew’s brutal beating and death this Christian minister has traveled to Laramie, as well as to Casper, Wyoming, Matthew’s birth place, to “celebrate” his death. And, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times by reporter David Kelly, on October 12, 2003 Reverend Phelps brought with him to Casper a granite monument engraved with Matthew’s face, followed by these words chiseled in stone:

“Matthew Shepard Entered Hell October 12, 1998 at age 21 In Defiance of God’s Warning: ‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is abomination.’ Leviticus 18:32.”
It was the Reverend Phelps who also attended Matthew Shepard’s funeral and, as the young man’s parents, family, and friends stood in mourning, screamed: “God hates fags!”
With this level of clarity as to the Divine Intention and Desire, entire countries have been forced under power of governmental authority and rule of law to obey God’s Will in this matter. In some nations the civil penalty for homosexuality is death—burial under a 12-foot concrete wall. In many places civil law has been created making gay marriage illegal. In the United States the president in 2004 personally campaigned to have his understanding of God’s desires regarding prohibition of gay marriage written into his country’s Constitution.
While certain sexual feelings may be very natural to the persons feeling them, they are not What God Wants, many people say, and are therefore, by definition, “unnatural.” A report on October 20, 2003 by Chris Zdeb of CanWest News Service in the Calgary Herald in Edmonton, Canada points to the possibility that the exact opposite may be true.

“Scientists have discovered 54 genes that suggest sexual identity is hard-wired into the brain before birth, and before development of the sex organs,” the journalist reports, and goes on to say:
“The findings released today by a team of University of California, Los Angeles, researchers could mean that sexuality, including homosexuality and transgender sexuality, are not a choice.”
Nevertheless, the clergy of many of the world’s largest religious denominations continue to assert that God condemns such sexual experiences.
Reporter Rachel Zoll of the Associated Press reported on October 7, 2004 that the most influential Anglican leader in Africa—home to nearly half the world’s Anglicans—said that the U.S. Episcopal Church has created a “new religion” by confirming a gay bishop in New Hampshire, breaking the bonds between the denominations with roots in the Church of England.
Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria also said in an exclusive AP interview with Zoll that he views the head of the Episcopal Church as an advocate for gays and lesbians and no longer trusts him. His comments come less than two weeks before an international panel was scheduled to release a critical report on whether the global Anglican Communion can bridge its divide over homosexuality. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of Anglicanism; Akinola leads the Anglican Church of Nigeria.
“The Communion is shattered. It is broken,” Akinola said. “The commonality that bound us together is no longer true.” (More separation in the name of God.)
Zoll’s report says that Akinola insisted he did not hate gays, despite his fiery comments in the past protesting the growing acceptance of homosexuality. He once called the trend a “satanic attack” on the church. But he said he could not accept attempts to “superimpose” modern culture on Scripture by ignoring what he said were Biblical injunctions against gay sex.
“I didn’t write the Bible. It’s part of our Christian heritage. It tells us what to do,” Akinola said. “If the word of God says homosexuality is an abomination, then so be it.”
The Zoll story goes on to say that those who support ordaining gays contend Scripture does not ban same-sex relationships, and that there was no understanding in biblical times that homosexuality was, as science is now proving, a natural orientation, not a choice.
Nevertheless, for many of the world’s people the afterlife consequence of engaging in such unnatural activities is understood to be everlasting damnation and torture in the fires of hell.
This is, those people believe, What God Wants.

Later in the book we are told that in the days of the New Spirituality…

Humans will understand that there is no form and no manner in which the expression of a love that is pure and true is inappropriate.
One result of this teaching: Humans for whom same-gender sexual attraction feels most natural will no longer be denounced, vilified, condemned, ostracized, isolated, assaulted, and killed by people who believe they are doing God’s will. Their wholesale discrimination and oppression will end.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that prediction came true?
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