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I tried leaving a comment at Positive Liberty, but I remain blocked. Well, my comments have been blocked for so long. I tried leaving the following remarks at this post.
First off, I think in your preamble you overstate the relationship the Church (and God perhaps) has with “the sinner.” You suggested:
No, Christianity doesn’t love the sinner, but hate the sin. The sinner is hated too; he is excluded from the church, and from the Kingdom, and from communion with God. In brief, the sinner goes to Hell. If that’s not hate, nothing is. Yet such is Christianity as I cannot help but see it.
Now, I cannot disagree with the last sentence but … the rest are not correct. There is an important missing adjective. The unrepentant sinner is the one going to Hell. The Church itself is entirely composed of sinners (of whom I am first, btw, as it is often remarked). The point is that of course the Church and our communion loves the sinner because he is us (or we are he whichever is grammatically less-sinful). And as for repentance, we in the Church (those of us trying-to-repent-of-our-sins) sort actually have a lot of experience with the difficulty in facing and repenting of our sins, i.e., it’s not an easy thing. So we also have some amount of experience with empathizing (and loving) the unrepentant sinner as well.
As for blood … I’m no expert and haven’t spoken to any but I did enjoy blood sausage … but haven’t since my conversion in part for the reasons you suggest. It also seems worth remarking that given the Levitical suggestions forbidding the eating of blood has a connected reason, “because blood is life.” I’d connect the blood dietary prohibition closer tied to abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishments than notions about sexuality.
Toward Jim Hanley’s remark:
But in the really big picture, any God who doesn’t let me eat my steak medium-rare is a cruel being undeserving of worship. And any God who would deny me pork chops and bacon is a monster.
Uhm, I take it you’re not a big fan of the 1500+ years of the Christian aescetic movement and for example, not taking any part today in the Nativity fast right now, eh?
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