Defiled, not “special”

A response to Adam Piggott’s appraisal of my post, Can Christians be gay?, including paradigmatic viewpoints, the value of peer groups, and Christian PR.

Readership: Christians

Paradigms and Definitions

“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” ~ Romans 12:2 NLT

In my experience, renewing the way I think is mostly about redefining words and concepts.

The word “love” is a good example that we can all understand. There is a worldly concept of love, and then there is the Christian concept of love. The worldly concept of love is called something completely different within an enlightened perspective. The terms, romance, infatuation, lust, exploitation, and codependency come to mind here.

Here we see that one word represents two, totally different paradigms. The challenge of renewing the mind requires one to learn the God ordained paradigm represented by any word in question.

But once in a while, words are hijacked and appropriated to mean other things within the contrasting paradigm. When this happens, the true reality of the matter can be suppressed or painted over, and then it becomes difficult to discern the true meaning of the word/concept. Christians and other awakened people call this phenomena “deception”.

The word “special” is the one in question here.

Homosexuals commonly call themselves “special”, as well as their sympathizers. Understandably, they have adopted this parlance to assuage their shame and grant themselves a bit of human dignity. So using the word “special” to describe them is buying into their world view.

Dalrock calls gays “special people” in a hilarious ventriloquist-esque voice of Matt Chandler’s attitude towards gays. The tongue-in-cheek verbal irony is understood.

I’ve been searching through Chandler’s articles, but so far, I haven’t found him making any reference to gays as “special”. This is quite interesting, because Dalrock’s verbiage of “special” has hit the mark on Chandler’s attitude towards gays. So the appropriation of the word “special” in this sense, appears to have originated from Dalrock. (I imagine Chandler might avoid using this term to describe gays, because it would be seen as patronizing, and he would lose respect and rapport.)

Adam Piggott also takes glee in hubristically calling gays “special people”. His style of verbal irony is entertaining, even inspiring. But his assessment of my post, Can Christians be gay? (December 12, 2018) is upside down. He’s twisting my argument to be in favor of supporting negotiation with gays concerning their integration into the church. I do not support negotiation (for the same reasons as he does), and I don’t believe a seamless integration is possible. To the contrary, the points of my post were to argue for the benefits of avoiding negotiation, to admit the vanity of pressing for integration, and to appoint proxies to do the tasks of any diplomatic work necessary in this regard.

To set my readers straight, aside from the various perspectives of semantics and literary devices, let me be clear that homosexuals are considered “special” within their own world view, but according to a Christian criteria, they are defiled. In common terms, that means decent people don’t want anything to do with them.

In my earlier post, I pointed out that homosexuals are defiled, but here I’ll add that the sodomite state of defilement is the reason why it’s always creepy to discuss homosexuality and Christianity together. This is the same quality that requires polite company to use the euphemism of being “special”. As a somewhat unrelated comparison, the word “special” is also used to refer to individuals suffering from severe retardation and certain other physical deformities, e.g. the Special Olympics.

But being “special” is not an esteemed position when it really means defiled. When gays ask for special treatment, what they’re really asking for is to not be treated as defiled. The thing is, if regular people could accept them as being undefiled, then they wouldn’t really be defiled.

Defilement is also why having gays in the church is such a controversial issue. But no amount of preaching, arguing, and social posturing is going to change the fact that people get the heebies in their presence – because that’s what it means to be defiled. It’s a spiritual reality, and no one, neither gays nor straights, can change that ontology, because defilement is permanent, save the grace of God.

The error of Adam’s argument

Adam’s reflections on my argument presumes that being defiled is equivalent to being “special”, and that being special is a preferred status. It’s not, unless you want to jump to the other paradigm and buy into the intersectional privilege stuff being touted by the world. Then by making this shift, aided by the convincing art of sarcasm, he attempts to lump me in with the like of Chandler.

To make this erratum more obvious to the reader, I’ve picked out a few statements from Adam’s discourse, and have substituted the word “defiled” for the word “special”. As you will see, swapping these two words, along with a few relevant adjectives, brings Adam’s revelries around to be spot on.

“Apparently nobody gets the gays except for those experienced with being gay. It’s such a unique and special [defiling] sin that all the rest of humanity is simply unequipped to deal with such a delicate [repulsive] matter.”

“They’re not really sinners like those other sinners; they’re special [defiled] people deserving of special [defiled] treatment.”

BTW, this treatment is not something to be achieved through sermons or social engineering. It’s just the way it is. It’s a fact written on people’s hearts. Everybody feels it, gays and straights alike, and that’s what all the squawk is about.

The following paragraph required a lot more editing, so please accept this revised paraphrase.

[“Homosexuals are sinful like everyone else, but they are also defiled. If they repent, accept salvation, and cast off their sins, then they may become Christians, but that is not enough for them to be welcomed into His house. They do not get any welcome as long as they are in a defiled state.”]

Last one.

“…all an individual has to do to suddenly receive special [defiled] treatment above [from] other Christians… is to declare himself a sodomite. By such an act he is suddenly special [defiled]. Nobody else in The Church can possibly relate to him unless they themselves were also a member of the special defiled sodomite club in the past. Perhaps they should [They will definitely] also get to sit in the special [informally reserved] pews up the front [in the back] with all of the other ex-sodomites, or not so ex-sodomites…”

Now the truth comes out. All the controversy in the Church is about this behavior. It is ridiculously unrealistic for pastors, such as Chandler, to ask their congregation, or any straight person, to truly love and accept homosexuals, without first remediating their state of defilement through the redemption of their souls.

On the merit of peer groups

As a rhetorical exercise, Adam substituted the word “rapist” for the word “gay” in my essay as a way to elucidate the ludicrousness of my argument. However, the core claim of my argument still stands – that certain people can better relate to those with similar backgrounds, and establishing social boundaries between different peer groups can be a win-win situation for all involved.

In this same argument, Adam suggested (in his own way) that the same approach towards resolving conflicts within a ministry could be applied to people having many other types of problems. He mentioned murderers, thieves, adulterers, and blasphemers as examples, but he did not offer any analysis of the types, only a dismissal of the whole idea.

In as much as it follows my original argument, I will tentatively agree with Adam, and up the ante by proposing that ex-cons are better suited to witness to felons, recovered alcoholics are better able to host AA meetings, and ex-junkies are most effective for counseling those going through rehab. This seems to be common sense, judging by the fact that most social welfare programs commonly adopt the same approach.

Now that I think of it, the Manosphere has done the same thing in bringing together men who have been disillusioned by the Feminist dominated culture, and given them a male space where they could voice their concerns and grievances. Now does anyone care to have Triggly Puff assume a position as our webhost? Um, maybe Roosh or Scott is better.

[Eds. note: Older readers may have noticed that I just broke the Fifth Wall.]

Some might argue that these associations have no positive value, and that they only create opportunities for thieves to compare notes, and that it introduces the temptation to regress into an old lifestyle. Although this is possible, I’m not convinced that it discounts any value that might be obtained through the association. There are many determinant factors, including the motives of those involved, how strong the leaders are, and how well the social interaction is managed.

Ultimately, this is a highly contextually affected topic that remains to be explored further in future discussions.

The value of Public Relations

Adam said it was “complete ludicrousness” for a church to worry about PR (public relations). Adam is wrong here, because these days (at least in the U.S.), PR is a serious concern. If the church, or any Christian for that matter, botches the PR then they might be looking at a lawsuit. It doesn’t take much to offend SJW’s.

Or who knows? If Christians draw lawsuits from anti-Christian factions, maybe God will use these lawsuits to revise the law of the land.  Bring it on!

I’m not saying that we should be tiptoeing around in fear of offending the Left, gays and feminists in particular. No, I’m suggesting that we should think things through and come up with a plan so that we can be well prepared in case things ever progress that far.

Token resistance my @$$!

The seventh Key to maintain Frame: Knowing what to do, and how to respond properly and effectively to a given situation.

One solution to this (that I can think of right now) would be for churches to have a good lawyer (or three), and a good insurance policy that would include coverage of frivolous lawsuits lodged by anti-Christian factions, not only against the church, but also against individual members.

The twelfth Key to maintain Frame: Being ready to demonstrate the lengths you are willing to go, to protect your interests and advance your purposes further.

On the charge against Σ Frame of convergence

Concerning the conclusions of my earlier post, Adam wrote,

“This nonsense is subtle propaganda pushed by the homo bloc.”

I admit, I pride myself on being as unbiased as possible, perhaps to a fault. But I feel this charge has gone a step too far. I am having trouble visualizing this outcome, so perhaps Adam or someone else could describe a cause and effect sequence to explain how my convergence could be possible.

Closing

As time goes on, the continued usage of the word “special” when describing defilement will soon build a widespread cognitive association that will defile the word “special” itself. When that happens, gays will then require a new euphemism in order to retain a sense of self-esteem. At that point, I might guess that the connotation of word “special” will be redefined to describe things that fall into the “waste not, want not” category.

May God forgive me for talking this way about human beings, but the truth needs to be said here.

Lastly, this is a difficult subject, so I want to thank Adam for the opportunity to have this much needed debate over a topic that few people are willing to tackle.

All the best down under!

Update: Read Adam’s response in his post, The homo end game in one photo. (December 20, 2018)

Related

• Upcoming on Sigma Frame: Christianity and Homosexuality