Life Of Jason

Liberal activist Dr. Roger Ray recently wrote a column in the Springfield News-Leader where he chose to cherry pick Scriptures from the Bible to claim that there is nothing in Christianity that condemns the practice of homosexual activity. Dr. Ray’s conclusions are wrong as he even showed in his piece when he said that “his point is that we have all sinned, every last one of us” and that homosexual activity was included in a list of things that the Apostle Paul listed as sinful.

Dr. Ray tried to build the case that because all have sinned that sin itself did not matter. However, he chose to simply ignore Romans 6:1-2 (ESV) that says “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” Obviously, a Christian is called to strive to no longer sin and in such should avoid willfully engaging in activities that are recognized as sins in the New Testament of which homosexual activity is clearly included on several occasions.

Apparently Dr. Ray doesn’t like those parts of the Bible.

Now, I’ve had discussions with those who try to claim the Bible doesn’t say what it says regarding this issue and almost all of them can have the discussion without resorting to hate speech and insulting of other people. These good folks recognize that even though we can have a difference of opinion we can still discuss the matter without falsely accusing the other of intolerance or narrow-mindedness or other types of insults which do nothing to advance reasonable discussion.

In the case of Dr. Roger Ray, that seems to be something he cannot do.

This is a man who claims to be a pastor…a representative of Jesus Christ…and these are the kinds of comments he is making to people who disagree with his political or doctrinal positions (all taken from the Springfield News-Leader message boards):

“You, MrSwis, are mean, condescending, anti-intellectual, dishonest, hateful but you love to post. Pioneer and Buzz are even worse. You crowd the pages of the blogs so that people who want to have an intelligent conversation about a news column no longer engage in the blogs. If you guys want to vomit onto the internet every few minutes, we should give you your own space where you can enjoy one another’s poison but leave the rest of us a place for intelligent dialogue.”

“With that many choices why would it be wrong for one church to have as its target audience, intelligent, educated, progressive, compassionate, liberal thinkers?”

Other churches don’t have compassionate, educated members?

“Actually, Radcon, what I have written is taught by Bible scholars in virtually all higher quality graduate schools of religion around the world. And, in fact, I will be returning to the pulpit in August when I help launch a new church in Springfield which will be free of chains to the religion of guilt, fear and superstition which you seem to cling to.”

The only graduate schools of religion of quality are the ones that agree with Dr. Ray’s version of the truth?  Does that mean he thinks the schools in Springfield are not quality schools?

Now, while there are obvious insults and insinuations that he is superior to the people who are challenging him, they do not quite rise to the level of hate speech. His interaction with me, however, does exactly that.

In my response to Dr. Ray’s comments to Radcon, I posted this:

“So we’re going to have someone playing “church” who claims to be a Christian all the while denying the truth of Scripture and arrogantly condemning those who do not deny Christ’s words as he does. Well, the Bible does clearly warn of false teachers like Mr. Ray so this should not be a surprise.

It’s a shame that the News-Leader gives a whole column to someone with an anti-Christian agenda but doesn’t give Christians equal space each week to counter the deceptions we see on a regular basis.”

Am I being hard on his doctrinal position? Absolutely. He’s clearly ignoring passages of the Bible and providing no defense nor explanation when challenged on scriptural positions as was done earlier in the thread by someone named “rec08″ who posted: “Roger Ray falsely states that “Jesus says nothing…about homosexuality.” Roger Ray, why did you ignore Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 19:4-6? “And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ “and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? “So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” (NKJV).” Dr. Ray ignored that post…to which he really cannot make a defense…and instead posted insults along the lines of what I shared earlier in this posting.

However, Dr. Ray’s response to me crossed the line into hate speech:

“So Jason, the Methodists, United Church of Christ, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Disciples of Christ and all other academic traditions are just playing church. So is it only those who belong to your book burning, wife beating, Jew hating, magical religion of fear who are the real Christians. You are such a freak.”

That’s right…Dr. Roger Ray accused me of burning books, beating my wife, hating Jews and instilling fear into people. Never mind that Dr. Ray does not know me nor has ever met me. He accuses me of beating my wife.

Now, I know some people will try and dismiss it and say that it’s not hate speech…but falsely accusing another person of beating their wife is hard to classify as anything but hateful in nature. They’ll try to say he’s speaking about religion in general and not necessarily me but Dr. Ray was specific when he said “YOUR” in his second line. He was saying that I advocate book burning, beating of women and hatred of Jews. None of which I advocate nor have ever advocated in this column or anywhere else for that matter.

The Springfield News-Leader needs to take a hard look at Dr. Ray as a columnist if he is going to continue to use hate speech to smear people who challenge his far-left positions. There’s a line between being flamboyant in your columns to stir interest and selling papers and crossing into hate speech. Dr. Ray did this when he accused me of beating my wife.

That just reinforces my belief that Dr. Ray is a false teacher. No one who claims to be a representative of Jesus Christ as the leader of a church body can reasonably say they’re showing Christ’s teachings by making false accusations of spousal abuse.