The Lies and Spin of Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson
News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
February 14, 2013
"There is a wide-spread 'gullibility' among professing Christians: every heretic who tells his story plausibly is sure to be believed, and everybody who doubts him is called a persecutor and a narrow-minded man. All these things are peculiar symptoms of our times. I defy any observing person to deny them. They tend to make the assaults of false doctrine in our day peculiarly dangerous. They make it more than ever needful to cry aloud, 'Do not be carried away.'" --- Bishop J.C. Ryle
Wherever he goes and whenever he speaks, the former Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, V. Gene Robinson preaches the same lines with the same set of lies and spin.First of all, he announces that the given and received moral order is now obsolete; by declaring it to be so, he promotes his own moral disorder. Then he says that his sexual behavior has not caused the Anglican Communion to break up (a gross over simplification). He concludes with the sweeping notion that God loves absolutely everybody regardless of how they behave, thus exempting any need for repentance and newness of life, nullifying the claims of the cross that demand we change to meet and do His will, and not accomplishing our own "devices and desires." His movie "Love Free or Die: How the Bishop of New Hampshire is Changing the World," is a paean to his own narcissism and self-absorption.
So thus it was this past week that Robinson made his way to St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas, to push acceptance for his homosexuality once more. [GJ - He was a few miles from our home, but we missed this epic event.]
Robinson delivered the lecture "Being a Prophet in Times of High Anxiety". He took questions from a crowd of hundreds that touched on his controversial election as the ninth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, as well as continued gay and lesbian involvement in the church, while a number of denominations including the Southern Baptist Convention, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod the United Methodist Church and the monolithic Roman Catholic Church have not, nor will ever (perhaps the Methodists will rollover in time) believe that sodomy is good and right in the eyes of God.
The issue, of course, is not about accepting the fact that there are gay, lesbian, transgender and bi-sexuals in the church; there have always been a small handful of such persons. What the church believes and teaches, however, is that any form of sexual behavior outside of marriage between a man and a woman is unacceptable, is without biblical foundation, and has no historical precedent allowing for it.
I have met dozens of gay and lesbian celibate folk over the course of 40 years who believe that celibacy is their calling, whether they like it or not. They look to the "eternal weight of glory" as the guiding principle of their lives and of their present circumstances.
Scripture is also very clear that people who practice sexual behaviors outside of marriage will not inherit the Kingdom. (1 Cor. 6:9, Gal 5:21)
Robinson began his discussion by saying that he tried not to be known as "the gay" bishop, but to no avail. "I stopped resisting it and just started taking advantage of it." Robinson says he chafed for several years at being branded the first openly gay bishop of the Anglican Church until he realized that he was wasting a pulpit from which he could advocate for equality.
VOL: If you self-identify as a "gay man", and your whole personhood is wrapped up in self- justification for your behavior, which has never been accepted by the church universal, why would you not? If your total identity is not that your life is hid with God in Christ, but is with what you do with your sexual organs, of course, you would advocate for it. To say that it is about "equality" is, of course, patently absurd. That 1.5% - 2% of the population who say they have same sex attractions and therefore need equality is about as absurd as saying babies should vote because they are, after all, human beings.
Robinson advised audience members to stop worrying about causing conflicts in the church, just as he had stopped worrying about his role within the church. Conflict, he said, may actually be what is needed in certain situations.
VOL: A self-inflicted wound is one thing; pushing your behavior onto a church, which in 2,000 years has never ever entertained the idea that homoerotic "love" has validity, is ridiculous and blasphemous beyond words. And then he adds fuel to the fire by saying that that what is needed, in certain situations, conflict might be needed. This is a bit like saying that the heresy of Arianism propounded by the priest Arius in Alexandria, Egypt, who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ and, more recently, Bishop Charles Bennison who said that Jesus was a sinner who forgave himself, is a conflict the church really needs. It's enough to make one draw one's breath and run in the opposite direction lest lightning struck.
"In the midst of conflict, God has a chance of being heard," Robinson explained.
VOL: God is heard in the "still small voice", not in strident demands for pansexual acceptance or turbulent discussions about homosexuality. God has spoken clearly and precisely and for which He has no intention of changing his mind just to suit the disordered sexual appetites of Louie (Crew) and Ernest, Vickie and Mark, Susan Russell or Mary Glasspool et al.
In explaining how he believed God's voice could be heard in the middle of conflict, Robinson told the story of a letter he received shortly after his election. The letter came from a woman who had killed her mother at the age of 15 and was in prison.
She wrote Robinson to explain how his new position within the church had touched her life, even though she was not gay or overtly religious.
"There was something about a church raising up a gay bishop that made her think that there may be a community that could accept (her)," he said.
VOL: Attempting to change the moral order is not remotely on the same level as murder. History is replete with murderers who have asked for forgiveness and gone to their deaths forgiven by God. King David had Bathsheba's husband killed to gain access to his wife; still David is described as a "man after God's own heart". Sexuality touches the very warp and woof of who we are, as God made us. Therefore, homosexuality is ontologically impossible, theologically unacceptable and undefendable, medically dangerous and reproductively impossible. Furthermore, there is ample evidence that sexuality is malleable and people can change. Despite the fact that a liberal media either refuses to report on it or chooses not to believe it, or condemn it outright - reparative therapy has changed the lives of thousands of men and women.
Robinson shared with the crowd how there were many negative sentiments from both inside and outside the Episcopal Church that could have harmed him. Robinson also said many people had asked him to not accept the position of bishop, even after he had been elected by the diocese.
VOL: They did so because they saw it is a blasphemy that would weaken the church's message, dumb down the gospel narrative, and enslave the church by caving into the culture and much more.
ROBINSON: "I was told the Anglican Communion would break apart upon my election and that didn't happen," he said. "Ten years later, it hasn't happened. The truth is, we are far more diverse then we have been willing to admit."
VOL: Absolutely not true. Because of his 2004 consecration, FCA/GAFCON was formed; it encompasses at least eleven Primates and their Anglican provinces, fully 80% of the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA) was formed in 2000. There is now a new Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) that includes the Convocation of Anglican Churches in North America with four dioceses (CANA); five Episcopal dioceses have left TEC; an Anglican Network in Canada has formed (ANIC); and a body in England - the Anglican Mission in England (AMIE) -- all pointing to a worldwide realignment of Anglicanism. That is precisely because Robinson and those who preceded him and now follow him have, in fact, caused a de facto (but not a de jure) split in the Anglican Communion. This is NOT about diversity; it is about a united Anglican Global South that is 90% evangelical and 100 percent heterosexual along with a fast failing western Anglican Communion that is withering and dying and will soon be on life support. The Episcopal Church can barely muster 700,000 on any given Sunday, the equivalent of one diocese in Nigeria. (That African province has over 21 million practicing Anglicans).
One observer, Thurman Metcalf of Rogers came to the speech because he said Robinson had a way of reaching people with the message of Christ in a way unlike others. VOL: Robinson is not remotely reaching people with the message of Jesus Christ because if he did, Robinson would have a different message - of a life changing encounter with Jesus Christ - and would cease his behavior, repent of his ways and offer up that Christ's death and resurrection had liberated him from the bondage of his sexual chains... Read this story, My Train Wreck Conversion: As a leftist lesbian professor, I despised Christians. Then I somehow became one. http://tinyurl.com/ao5kujf
Robinson is the author of "God Believes in Love: Straight Talk about Gay Marriage" and is the subject of the new documentary film "Love Free or Die: How the Bishop of New Hampshire is Changing the World," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2012.
This is a total capitulation to one's own unholy desires, of a deformed Eros, (see C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves), of my will be done, not "thy will be done". It is saying God cannot change the direction of the seeker who desires heartfelt change, redeem the lost soul and bring joy to the sexually broken.
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come." (II Cor. 5:17). Sadly that is not the message of V. Gene Robinson.
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