Comments on: loving the other part of the flock http://ellenharoutunian.com/2009/08/03/loving-the-other-part-of-the-flock/ Seeking our Living Orthodoxy Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:22:21 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Nancy http://ellenharoutunian.com/2009/08/03/loving-the-other-part-of-the-flock/#comment-673 Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:22:17 +0000 http://ellenharoutunian.com/?p=1680#comment-673 Thank you so much for writing this. I want to hear more.

]]> By: jenny morgan http://ellenharoutunian.com/2009/08/03/loving-the-other-part-of-the-flock/#comment-664 Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:52:49 +0000 http://ellenharoutunian.com/?p=1680#comment-664 Beautifully said,Ellen. Thanks for taking the risk around this discussion. And thank you for walking with folks who will find deeper transformation and more love because you are there. Your frienship and your ability to engagge, really engage,means more and more to me as time and the issue moves forward. I think I saw Jesus at that party too — laughing, loving, and drinking a glass of wine right next to you. Hope you are having fun down south

]]> By: lindy http://ellenharoutunian.com/2009/08/03/loving-the-other-part-of-the-flock/#comment-658 Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:25:03 +0000 http://ellenharoutunian.com/?p=1680#comment-658 I liked what you wrote for another reason besides the topic. There is a lot of worry among believers who turning from Christianity to follow Christ on how will they know where the lines are that they are not to cross. I can speak from my own experience and it is wonderful to hear yours. Anxiety that is replaced by that unmistakable peace… what a wonderful light on your path!

]]> By: kathyescobar http://ellenharoutunian.com/2009/08/03/loving-the-other-part-of-the-flock/#comment-656 Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:28:13 +0000 http://ellenharoutunian.com/?p=1680#comment-656 you rock, my friend. way to risk it. it’s far too important not to. lots of love & hope for what could be….

]]> By: Hannah http://ellenharoutunian.com/2009/08/03/loving-the-other-part-of-the-flock/#comment-655 Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:00:59 +0000 http://ellenharoutunian.com/?p=1680#comment-655 It is really hard being in the middle of all these things. I grew up in an area where I just didn’t know any gay people, but made some friends who were gay after college. They’re great people and I love them, and never had to think about whether to love or hate them while I hated their sin. But recently, my Aunt’s husband has “come out of the closet” and I’m finding it much more difficult and complicated than just having a gay friend. The more I think about it, though, the more I think I am less angry with his “gay-ness” and more angry with the way he is treating my aunt and my cousins (his children), his selfishness, his lies.

Anyway, I think you’re right. I think it is important for the church (especially those of us who were/are pretty sheltered) to process how we view sins and sinners (not just the ones we see on a regular basis–gossip, pride, gluttony). And really, protecting the kids in youth group from movies about gay people isn’t going to make them Christians… It will just make them sheltered and maybe s little less free to love those around them.

]]> By: ellenharoutunian http://ellenharoutunian.com/2009/08/03/loving-the-other-part-of-the-flock/#comment-654 Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:58:13 +0000 http://ellenharoutunian.com/?p=1680#comment-654 Wow Laura and Skip, well said.

]]> By: Laura Martin http://ellenharoutunian.com/2009/08/03/loving-the-other-part-of-the-flock/#comment-653 Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:54:00 +0000 http://ellenharoutunian.com/?p=1680#comment-653 Thank you Ellen for leading in the continuation of a discussion that must be had. Maybe the question to the angry parent(probably one of my friends!) should be “what’s a boy in our youth group to think if the church DOESN’T show the movie?”
It brings up so many more questions about the role of the church. An invitation to dialogue and an invitation to hear personal stories…those are exactly the kind of beautiful invitations that a people bearing the identity of “Body of Christ” need to be extending. Whatever the comfort level. As a parent of young and younger ones myself, my greater concern is that we don’t raise a generation of kids that experience Christ’s church as closed….as not extending genuine hugs and hands to those we may disagree with. My experience is that often in the process of those invitations I discover that there’s much more that I agree with in the person than our points of disagreement. Community. I want for my children and for myself to learn to embrace peolpe without fear of validating this or that lifestlye principle. One can’t help but to think of who Jesus spent time with….prostitutes, church-goers, theives, betrayers, self-focused ladder climbers, Bible teachers…and He loved them all (I’m so thankful because I’m all over that list!)…without fear of validating their(my) sin.

]]> By: Skip http://ellenharoutunian.com/2009/08/03/loving-the-other-part-of-the-flock/#comment-652 Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:11:38 +0000 http://ellenharoutunian.com/?p=1680#comment-652 “Christianity has a principle, ‘Hate the sin, but love the sinner’ which is more easily preached than practiced. If Christians could simply recover that practice, modeled so exquisitely by Jesus, we would go a long way toward fulfilling our calling to be dispensers of God’s Grace. For a long time, C.S. Lewis reports, he could never understand the hairsplitting distinction of hating a person’s sin and hating the sinner. How could you hate what a man did, and not hate the man? Lewis says, ‘But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life–namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things is that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.’ “
What’s So Amazing About Grace – Yancey

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