(Part 2) Top products from r/TrueChristian

Here is a shorter, more approachable summary of some of the evidences I attempted to explain. I did not write this necessarily thinking you need to be a NT Scholar or a Philosopher, but rather to show you that this is an ongoing battle and Christianity as had a resurgence in academia today, particularly among philosophers of religion, since Alvin Plantinga helped show it is intellectual credible after the fall of verificationism/positivism (the self defeating notion that only that which can be acquired through the senses is true or falsifiable). He explained that even without evidence, in the absence of a defeater for Christian theism, belief in god is justified as a properly basic belief--one that is arrived at without inference to anything else in reality (i.e. the belief that you are not a brain in a vat that is being tricked by a mad scientist to believe you are here...you can't prove it is true that this is not the case, but you'd be crazy to think otherwise!). Know that God does command us to keep up with the evidence of Christianity, and defenses for it, so that we will be prepared to answer for it. So to some extent you should work on your apologetics, but I think it is important that you do not let this distract you from what's really important and faith-deriving: pursuing God! Read His word, and apply it to your life. Take Him seriously, and pray to Him. Christianity is not a religion: it is a relationship. If an author wanted His characters to know Him, He'd have to write Himself into that story...Jesus is God in our place.

But how are you to have a relationship with someone you do not understand, and who's ways you have not attempted to comprehend? You must draw close to Him if you are to trust Him. The more you follow His way, the more you will understand it and see that He is worth following. Faith is trust within the context of a relationship wherein the two partners assure the other of their love to each other progressively over time. In this case, Jesus has already shown His love, and continues to, but it is up to you to find the reality of just how much He loves you. Read His word (where we can encounter Him, in the text or in the actions and words of others), submit to Him daily, and serve others while proclaiming His name (through your actions and words). Pursue genuine love--which is to give with none to gain, and I pray that you will find Him at the center of everything as I have. I'm happy to answer respectful questions. Feel free to PM me or reply to this thread. I recently wrote some replies on a reddit post entitled "how many people are going to hell" on this sub and I think it would one step closer to understanding if you learned my position on it (you don't have to agree but it should nevertheless help you on your way to understanding a doctrine of Christianity).

Further resources I recommend on apologetics and Christianity in general (you'll probably not find all your answers in one place):

The ESV Bible (read it once a year with commentaries.)

Become familiar with church history and theology

Jesus Calling

Ravi Zacharias: RZIM.org, Why Jesus, More Than a Carpenter, Jesus Among Other Gods

Fritz Ridenour: So What's the Difference

William Lane Craig: Reasonablefaith.org, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, Reasonable Faith or his more approachable On Guard (Student Edition), his youtube channel and podcast

J.P. Moreland: Love God With All Your Mind

N.T. Wright (who emulates C.S. Lewis when he goes outside of his NT Scholarship): The Resurrection of The Son of God, Simply Christian, Surprised by Hope, Jesus and the Victory of God

John Lennox: Gunning for God, God's Undertaker

C.S. Lewis: The Abolition of Man, Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain, A Grief Observed, The Screwtape Letters, Reflections on the Psalms, Surprised by Joy

G.K. Chesterton: Orthodoxy

Van Til: Apologetics

Charles Spurgeon

Beth Moore

John Piper's books and website desiringGod.org

Lee Strobel: The Case For Christ/Faith (introductory)

Frank Turek: Stealing From God, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be and Atheist (never read the latter, though I am under the impression it is not as scholarly as the other resources I mentioned though may serve as a good introduction)

Alvin Plantinga: Where the Conflict Really Lies, Warranted Christian Belief or his more approachable Knowledge and Belief in God, some lecture notes on brief arguments for God's existence

Got Question.org (I don't think it's that great for apologetics, though it attempts to use the Bible to answer many theological questions....just stay away from their "young earth" and "creationism" (attempts to refute evolution by natural selection in an effort to support a literal interpretation of the Adam and Eve story) stuff and you'll be fine. I haven't investigated creationism yet, though, so I admit it is possible that evolution is not necessarily true but I don't feel inclined to think otherwise. Their basic argument is that the existing evidence for evolution requires the presupposition of atheism and can be easily interpreted as consistent with a literal interpretation of the Adam and Eve story.)

Bishop Robert Barron's Youtube Channel

an essay on the problem of evil

Switchfoot, Twenty One Pilots, David Crowder, Chris Tomlin, and Mercey Me are also some good bands with a Christian message that I think have lyrics--whether you like them with the music or not--that are theologically deep.

And of course, prayer and your own critical thinking/meditation.

I highly recommend the book Bible, Gender, and Sexuality by James Brownson (link: https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Gender-Sexuality-Reframing-Relationships/dp/0802868630/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517791982&sr=8-1&keywords=bible+gender+and+sexuality). It helped me come to terms with both my faith and my sexuality (I'm 23 and gay). There are components of the Bible which, while divinely inspired, are nonetheless >2,000 years old. I don't hesitate to suggest that the Bible is not the healthiest source of understanding relationships that pertain to 2018.

You're gay, and God made each of us wonderfully and fearfully created. Congratulations on admitting it to yourself and being out about it here. I can't help but believe that God would want you to be in a loving, caring, relationship filled with joy and thanksgiving.

Edit: I also don't think the authors of the Bible had the clearest understanding of Biology. Human sexuality is not something chosen, but simply a component of an individual's identity. And while its very easy to say "the Bible prohibits homosexual relationships", it, to me, fails to resonate with the deep human need that most of us have - to be with in a loving relationship with another. I tend to think that, as we uncover more and more of the nature of reality and of Creation, God's Creation, we must revisit scripture in light of the nature of Creation as it is (IE Genesis is not, cannot, be literal, the Earth is not 6,000 years old). Along the same line, sexuality is not a choice, we are born more or less some kind of something (may be gay, maybe straight, maybe asexual, or anything in between). And as that's the reality of the world, perhaps the prohibitions of homosexuality need to be revisited, and reunderstood, not as literal prohibitions but rather as components of a complicated text that is heavily influenced by the culture(s) it was written in.

I am sorry you are going through this. I don't know your situation beyond what you described but I would encourage you to do your best to shine where you are. find close community of solid Christian roots and be the light and salt your family needs. However, if God is leading you elsewhere, certainly do not let me stand in the way

I think there's a book (or video if you prefer) that might really help you navigate your conversations with your family in a way that will help them see the folly of their thinking.

It's called "tactics" by Greg Koukl and it's about how to use questions to understand people better and then using more questions to help them see the issues

book

video part 1
video part 2

He's so readable that I can definitely recommend skipping the books about St. Augustine and just going directly to the source. As others have mentioned, Confessions. Others you may be interested in are City of God and On Grace And Free Will.

Also, as /u/Philip_Schwartzerdt mentioned, John Calvin isn't typically considered one of the Church Fathers given that his time on earth came in the 16th century. In fact, as a Catholic, we would consider him a heretic, but that's neither here nor there. :)

For other early Church Fathers books, you may want to check out this collection of writings from the early church, Against Heresies by St. Iranaeus, countering heresy in the early Church, and The First And Second Apologies by St. Justin Martyr, a convert to the faith at about 130 A.D. and who was martyred (surprise) around 165 A.D.

As you may have guessed, with me being a Catholic in the Roman Rite, that's the perspective to which my study of the early Church Fathers led me, but if you wish to get a primer on St. Irenaeus before the books come, this is a worthwhile read.

I highly encourage the study of the fathers. The whole Christian world disagrees on many parts of of Sacred Scripture, and the testimony of the fathers, especially those who were direct disciples of the Apostles, should be one of our primary sources of discerning Christian truth amid the chaos. Plainly put, there are many interpretations of Scripture which "make sense" or are feasible outside of the tradition of the Apostles, but if said interpretation is true, it should be reflected in the doctrines, beliefs, and practices of those whom the Apostles taught.

I'll pray for you as you jump into this study. Please reach out if I can be of any help!

Peace,

DK

To help understand what a Christian approach to Muslims should be, you could try Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus by Nabeel Qureshi (who sadly passed away last year.

Called to Community is a great collection of writings for those interested in intentional community. It contains writings from Eberhard Arnold, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, Jean Vanier, C. S. Lewis, J. Heinrich Arnold, Johann Christoph Arnold, Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Richard J. Foster, Søren Kierkegaard, Gerhard Lohfink, Charles E. Moore, George MacDonald, Thomas Merton, Henri J. M. Nouwen and Chiara Lubich, Saint Benedict, Joan Chittister, David Janzen, John M. Perkins, Mother Teresa, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and others. It is published by Plough.

I also just re-read God's Smuggler by Brother Andrew - I love this book and it was a great inspiration to my faith when I was younger.

For me personally, it was never the study materials that helped me deepen my Bible study. I had to change the way I read the Bible.

Living by the Book by Hendricks was pretty helpful in getting me started. It also helped to develop a specific highlighting scheme with five or six different colors, each color relating to something I was specifically searching for (like commands to obey, prayers to pray, words like love, holy, suffering, and names). Specifically, looking for repetitions, themes, and trying to locate a "summary verse" in books have really brought a lot of insight into my study. Summary verses are great, because it forces you to "condense" the entire book into that one verse. Not all books have one, and sometimes its a summary passage, but its good practice for synthesizing and processing the content you're reading.

Once I started reading with a purpose to look for specific things, I began noticing details that prompted deeper questions that would sometimes lead to profound breakthroughs in my personal understanding of Scripture. Other times, I would have to do independent studies of the original languages (with tools, I'm not a languager) to arrive at an answer because study Bibles and websites didn't address the question well enough.

Blue letter bible is a useful place for comparing translations and looking at the Greek and Hebrew.

There's a really good book called His Word in My Heart: Memorizing Scripture For a Closer Walk With God by Janet Pope. I'm linking only because there's a newer edition that doesn't always show up on Amazon. The previous edition was published around 2002 I think. Anyway, it covers a lot of tips and the why behind it as well.

Here's an interview she did as well if you don't want to get the book. It's short and she covers the topic at a higher level.

I think the book or video will give you a better background on the why and how rather than just a list of verses to memorize. Good luck!

What? I didn't. I have no idea what you're referring to. =\

Wow. It's not showing on the thread anymore...that's really weird. Never seen that before. The whole thing still shows up in my comment history though. I'll re-paste it below:

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Sure. I mostly mean being deliberately inclusive on non-core tenets and practices, while never compromising on the biblical core. We want to avoid ever comprising the faith, while also being willing to change whatever God wants us to change, in the vein of Paul's explanation in [1 Corinthians 9:19-23]. /u/versebot

I mean we ask two questions as a basis for life: "Where is it written in scripture?" and "How is your walk?" This puts focus on knowing Christ as upheld by scripture and embodying him in our lives as the center of everything else.

I mean we ask "Where are the absolute worst hurts in the world?" and concentrate missional focus there deliberately (which, humanly speaking, can be very hard to do).

I'll do my best to give some more specific examples below.

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Regarding core-vs-secondary: For example, we explicitly affirm both infant baptism (followed later by confirmation) AND baby-dedication (followed later by personal-commitment baptism). We believe baptism as a practice is intended to unite believers into one body, rather than dividing them by the means of practicing it. This allows all believers to follow their consciences in the matter and respects the biblical argument one can make for each practice.

Another is that we believe in the full ordination of women (as a "trajectory" that be traced in the NT) and in the need to genuinely embrace LGBTQ people with love over everything else -- while affirming the centrality of scripture on all matters including sexuality (e.g. rejecting the allegedly "unstoppable slippery slope" that Piper and others say inevitably results in churches kowtowing to sexual liberalism . . . which we nevertheless are not doing). A good depiction of how we approach this matter is embodied in this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Slaves-Women-Homosexuals-Exploring-Hermeneutics/dp/0830815619

Also, in sharing about the ECC before, I've run across the following commentary (from a Methodist's point of view) on our evangelistic mission:

http://www.confessingumc.org/could-we-learn-from-the-evangelical-covenant-church/

We've made it a conspicuous mission to conduct racial reconciliation and to seek multiracial/multiculturalism as a denomination in any ways we can. Any ways that people are divided from each other creates a gaping wound that the church can step in to heal in Christ, and we believe it is impossible to fully honor this without engaging in racial reconciliation.

In reaching out to anyone in poverty, we focus as local churches on the poor in our own neighborhood/city while also asking the global question, "Who are the absolute poorest people on the planet?" and concentrating denominational funding there deliberately.

We've also put a huge focus on combating slavery and sex trafficking over the last two decades, believing that this is one of the basest ways human beings are routinely desecrated around the world.

More or less, I've looked around at various Christian denominations with heartache over so many things that people refuse to change (that just aren't central) -- and also grieved at so many ways that multiple denominations have utterly compromised to accommodate the "demands of the world." I've felt such relief and gratitude to have a clear conscience in supporting the Evangelical Covenant church's stance and mission.

We're fairly small numerically speaking, and we have a lot to learn from our brothers and sisters in every denomination. Will/do leaders in the ECC ultimately require rebuke and correction? Almost certainly. But I feel relieved by (rather than ashamed of) the ECC on an ongoing basis. Are we somehow "superior"? Of course not. We're as humanly broken as the rest of the global church. But that hasn't stopped us from following Jesus in the special ways he's called us to do.

We're kind of "post-Lutheran" in our Swedish roots, but that's an easier thing to simply look up.

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If there's anything I shared here that concerns you as mods, feel free to confront me about it. I will not be offended -- and neither will I make pretenses to falsely seek approval.

Check out the book His Word in my Heart by Janet Pope. My goal is to memorize the full NT eventually, and she gives great tips. She memorizes books at a time, and gives some great ways to do so. There's really no right or wrong way to memorize Scripture. You can do the verse numbers with them if you'd like. Most of the Scripture I know I don't know the verse numbers, I just have them in my heart from reading them and God will always bring them to my memory when I need them :)

You are welcome!

I think I first came across it in this book which is definitely on the academic side of things but is approachable – I had no background in OT studies. It compares and contrasts Jewish thought to what we see in the cultures around it, to glean understanding both from what they had in common (eg, the divine council) and how they differed (eg, no images in the temple). Super interesting.

The author teaches at Wheaton.

Bible Study Fellowship is something that might be what you're wanting. If you're looking for material, hit up google.
Faithlife Corporation makes some good material as well. I have these and they're OK.

Living By the Book is really good for hermeneutics and how to study the Bible.

Lastly, /r/biblereading is a sub that I help with. It's just redditors reading and putting their ideas on the internet for all to see. We could start a separate sub if you think it would work, and we could hit up specific topics.

>I believe that Christianity is rationally defensible, that religious experiences are valid, and that belief in God enjoys proper basicality--as Alvin Plantinga has defended

I think Plantinga, Alston and Wolterstorff's reformed epistemology is one of the most convincing defenses of rational belief that has hence been devised.

Warranted Christian Belief is an extraordinarily good read. There is an updated, condensed version also: Knowledge and Christian Belief.

>in the opinion of modern scholars

In the opinion of some modern scholars. The opinions to which you give voice are hardly universal and they're trending toward a minority among contemporary scholars. Such views were much more widely held at the beginning of the 20th Century, for instance, than they are today.

Among the scholars to which you can refer to good scholarship and a less Modernist point of view are N.T. Wright and Scott Hahn. Both are (as far as I know) well regarded scholars of the Bible. There are others but those are the two that spring to mind.

>the disciples didn't really believe Jesus was God (if he existed)

I think this is false on the face of it, and even Bart Ehrman concludes that it was their belief in the resurrection that convinced Jesus' disciples that Jesus was God in the years immediately following the crucifixion. See here for a radio interview with Ehrman about his book, How Jesus Became God.

Ehrman courted the disfavor of his atheist admirers in one of his other recent books, where he took aim at the Jesus mythicists, arguing that Jesus was definitely an historical character.

Again, I would refer you to N.T. Wright and his works on the historicity of the Bible.

> the Bible is a collage of stolen myths

Once again, this is just flatly false and is only believed by the most extreme "scholars" in the Jesus Mythicist camp (as far as I know).

>My second question: is there a term for someone who studies Biblical topics in general? As in one who studies ancient near-east cultures, comparative mythology, languages, Biblical source documents, Jewish literature, archaeology, and other "Biblical Humanities"? That's what I like.

I don't know about a "term", but check out Scott Hahn, the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, this book (if you can find it), and especially (for this question), I would recommend John Walton and his books, The Lost World of Genesis One and Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible.

I studied a dozen of translations and have become quite fond of literal translations based on the Textus Receptus which the majority here won't probably recommend. For me in Germany there are two options Schlachter 2000 and Luther 1545. For you there is probably the King James Version.

However, if you plan on thoroughly studying I'd suggest a commentary to accompany your bible.

Since most will recommend the ESV, which is a good option, I recommend the John MacArthur Commentary.

You should read The Way of the Pilgrim. Its a story about a man who hears the scripture [1 Thess 5:17] , "pray without ceasing," and embarks on a journey to find out how a person can ever fulfill that commandment.

It's one of my favorite books.

On The Incarnation by Athanasius of Alexandria. It is a classic, that all Christians should read, at least once in their lives.

The Way of a Pilgrim: And the Pilgrim Continues His Way is also a great classic. It focuses on how to pray. It is written in the form of a story. We don't know who wrote it. Neither, if it is nonfiction or fiction.

Hi! No, it's absolutely not a sin. It's just church tradition that calls it a sin. The passage in Corinthians is not about marriage, but probably idolatry. (Source) . Furthermore, Christian sociologists (Source) have shown that the early church had an abundance of Christian women and not that many Christian men, so it was common to marry non-Christian men, and indeed that's one way that Christianity spread. 1 Peter 3:1 talks about this (and does not call it a sin). 1 Cor 7:13-16 does not call it a sin either. Both passages indicate that it was a common thing.

Have a wonderful marriage and life!

Read Surprised By Hope by N.T. Wright. The concept of "Heaven" as a destination (as presented by the pastor you heard) is a lot different than the "New Heaven and New Earth" we are promised.

Jesus is the first fruits of a physical resurrection. He ate with the disciples to prove this point.

The Case for Christ (the [book][1], although the [film][2] adaptation wasn't horrible) and Cold Case Christianity would probably be good reads for you.

Case for Christ was written by an investigative journalist and legal editor for the Chicago Tribune. It details his transition from Atheism to Christianity, and how his attempt to debunk Christianity lead to him coming to Christ.

Cold Case Christianity was written by a detective who solved a number of high-profile cold cases. He has a similar story, as his book details his conversion from Atheism to Christianity through the use of cold-case investigation techniques.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0310345863/

[2]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6113488/

I wrote a book that is a study of the Nicene Creed, which may be helpful regarding the basics of the faith.

He's actually just written a book on his conversion experience. Its a great read! Incredible guy.

Book of Concord.

And, because it's an awesome resource to be available, bookofconcord.org.

The Bible you linked to is, in fact, not an interlinear edition; it's a reader's edition. That means it has the text in the original languages, then in footnotes gives the meaning of rare words (I don't know how often, maybe for all words used less than 50 or 100 times in Scripture) or for unusual/confusing forms.

By contrast, an interlinear edition like this one gives the original text with a literal translation of each individual word immediately underneath, alternating Greek/Hebrew with English line by line.

I have a one-volume Greek interlinear NT and a three-volume Hebrew interlinear OT, so finding a single book with all of it is unlikely or at least unwieldy.

Hello there /u/drac07, as a person who has studied the Exodus, such a topic matter is divided among people (even some Christians). Certainly from what you've said that some people seem desperate, I would agree with you on that. Though not all are.
I recommend the scholarly works of James K Hoffmeier and Kenneth A Kitchen who are experts in the field of Egyptology and Biblical Archeology.

Israel in Egypt
On the Reliability of the Old Testament

Hopefully this will help you to understand the historicity of the Exodus, other events and also answering sceptical scholars objections to the Exodus.

I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Turek and Geisler

Stealing from God by Frank Turek

Tactics by Greg Koukl

The Emmaus Code by David Limbaugh

I just checked the wikipedia page about it and I am not sure if that is a good unbiased source.

Further searching showed me this book. Have you read this one? https://www.amazon.com/Reliability-Old-Testament-K-Kitchen/dp/0802803962

Here is the mobile version of your link

https://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Bible-All-Worth/dp/0310246040

this one is a classic if it isn't already in your collection

>https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Bible-Standard-Thumb-Burgundy/dp/1432102400/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1485357852&sr=8-2&keywords=King+James+Bible

WHAT!?!? That one doesn't even include the Apocrypha. All legitimate editions of the KJV have the Apocrypha.

https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Bible-Standard-Thumb-Burgundy/dp/1432102400/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1485357852&sr=8-2&keywords=King+James+Bible

Early Christian Fathers

History of the Church

It made me think of the perfect study Bible for you: the one by Madame Jeanne Guyon. I've read many commentaries in my time and never found any with the level of her depth and insight.

Unfortunately her commentaries, originally written in the 18th century, are difficult to find. There's one here on Amazon and you could find the same book on Ebay if you wanted.

Many annoying little gaffes like this are easily resolved for me the more quickly I reach for this bad boy.

>If it was to symbolize His spiritual rebirth

Nope nope nope. It was to prove that God does and will physically, bodily raise people from the dead, flesh, bones and all. If anything, the Resurrection is a symbol of God's love, but really, much of Christianity is itself a symbol that points us to the Resurrection. Christ was resurrected because God promised that one who would follow His commandments would live, and Jesus did that. Christ was resurrected to bring in the kingdom of God, and kingdoms need a King. (And the Resurrection made sure we know the name of the King: [romans 1:1-7 nrsv]. And Christ was resurrected to be the reboot of humanity, to be the new faithful Adam. Christ was resurrected for us.

Christ was resurrected for the same reason why Adam was created - because God thinks that the physical world is a pretty cool place, and wants to have fleshy, squishy meat humans bearing His image and running the place for Him. It's good for Jesus to be the eternally begotten Son of God, it's even better for Jesus to have a real human body.

When Jesus died, He went to the grave, the Pit - to Sheol. (Sometimes we use the world Hell, but we don't mean the Lake of Fire, since it wasn't time for that place yet. In this case, Hell = Sheol.) He went there because that's where dead humans go. In Sheol, Jesus "preached to the spirits who in former time did not obey" - [1 peter 3:18-22 nrsv]. Most of us believe that at this point, all the righteous who died before Jesus - starting with Adam and Eve and everybody from then on - were released from Sheol and brought into Heaven to worship God.

Jesus committed no sins, but he did take on sin, in the flesh, to kill sin in the flesh. And Jesus was not judged, because Jesus is the judge

It's not a sin to question this. The resurrection is just plain weird. That's one of the many reasons why we were considered "foolish" - our crazy devotion to this weird Jewish god was bad enough, but to say that people got their bodies back after death, and that it was a good thing? Nonsense! And to say that all this happened to some poor Jew, and that was reason to call him King? What nutters!

This is a great book: Surprised by Hope by NT Wright.

> Demonstrate it.

No.

> It's so obvious just reading Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. that homosexuality is a wicked sin in of itself.

To say that a story about a city of men who try to gang rape three angels visiting them somehow obviously means that God condemns monogamous, same-sex relationships is intellectually lazy at best. Hearing this as one of your scriptural evidences tells me you haven't yet done any sort of serious study on this subject.

Romans 1 is one of the verses that requires careful study and a nuanced hermeneutic. I'm not going to try to debate its meaning here. If you're honestly interested in some careful Biblical study of this subject that arrives at a different conclusion than your own I would recommend reading The Bible, Gender, and Sexuality.

And before writing any nuanced scriptural argument off as hermeneutical gymnastics, consider any of the things in scripture you yourself would not likely claim to follow. Why do we not require women to have their head covered while praying? Because of careful study and a nuanced hermeneutic. Why do we not require women to be silent while in church? Because of careful study and a nuanced hermeneutic. Why do we now condemn slavery despite Paul's command to slaves to obey their masters, and the general lack of condemnation of the practice throughout scripture? Because of careful study and a nuanced hermeneutic. Why do we not stone to death any rebellious sons? Because of careful study and a nuanced hermeneutic.

Keep in mind that what we're debating here in my comment is not even whether or not gay marriages are sinful, but only whether or not it's a reasonable position to hold as a Bible-believing Christian. That's such a low bar. It's honestly about acknowledging that there's a non-zero chance your interpretation of the Bible is wrong on this subject.

To flip it around, it's similar to when an affirming Christian hears your non-affirming stance and immediately calls you a bigot, assumes you don't have the love of Christ in you, and writes you off as a fundamentalist who misses the actual message of the Gospel. I'm sure you're not a fan of that. It's frustrating. It's condescending. It lacks even an ounce of humility in their own position. It's not assuming the best of you.

> but it wasn't culturally condemned to hate or revile them

Even if you hold a non-affirming stance we should be happy that less people 'hate and revile' gay individuals. Even when we condemn a sin we should always be looking for ways to humanize those who are different from us in order to love them in the best way possible.